


Your Songs Will Carry (A Stolen Century Later)

by Krasimer



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Dad'n'port, Dysfunctional Family, Episode: e067-069 Story and Song Parts 1-3, F/M, Family, Lup (The Adventure Zone) Lives, M/M, Merle Highchurch is a dad, Old Friends, Spoilers, in a couple of ways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-27 22:25:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13890414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Krasimer/pseuds/Krasimer
Summary: She watches him and sees only what she took from him.Magnus keeps her like a secret in his breast.The first thing that Taako thinks, when he sees the Grim Reaper, is how cute he is.The chalice speaks to something deep inside of him and Merle almost wants to pick it up and hurl it into the sun.It takes so much effort to see them, to try and make them trust him.They make it through Wonderland.





	Your Songs Will Carry (A Stolen Century Later)

She watches him and sees only what she took from him.

Davenport once had kind eyes, the sort of green that sparkled with wit and happiness. She, Lucretia, Madam Director, had taken that from him. It does not matter that she was trying to protect him. He is a shell of who he used to be, his words taken and his mind gone and all he has left is his name.

Sometimes not even that, anymore.

His eyes are different now, too. Like he is constantly staring at some sort of horror, staring down the sights of a great weapon pointed directly at his heart. His pupils always constricted, his mouth often pulled into a frown beneath the mustache he still wore. Davenport, her captain, their captain, surrogate father and always so caring, is reduced almost to nothing.

Lucretia swears to herself that she will fix it.

And then some more of her family is back – found when a Regulator was going after a relic. Taako pulls the thing out of his bag and she stares at it for a moment, glancing at Davenport when they’re all focused elsewhere.

Davenport is staring at Merle and her heart just about breaks again from the momentary look of longing she sees in his eyes.

The moment passes.

Merle, Magnus, and Taako all three take their rewards, the job offer, and their leave. Lucretia waits only minutes before she drops everything and moves to Davenport’s side. He takes her hands when she puts them to the sides of his head, studying his face and feeling a wave of sickness rise up within her.

She gave them all more time but she broke her captain and she broke his heart.

Hopefully, one day, Merle and Davenport can forgive her.

Hopefully, her entire family can.

 

~

 

Magnus keeps her like a secret in his breast.

Julia, with the way her hair always smelled of rain and flowers, the scent of the world when the heavens open up. The way her feet danced when she heard music, the angle of her arms when she taught him how to move the same. The way her hands felt in his, how her thin fingers were still able to pick up a battle axe and fight back.

How she took out several soldiers on her own, blood dripping from her hands and her rain-and-flowers scent was still there within all of the violence.

Her honey-colored hair and the tilt of her smile when peace was brought back to their home.

Magnus holds onto every detail of her, every moment he can remember of her existence, because he does not want to ever forget. Something bad would happen if he did, he is sure of it. He keeps her in his heart and that is how she is never truly gone.

Even though she is dead and passed, she is still with him at all times.

He meets Merle and he meets Taako and he decides he likes them. His heart feels warm and happy, like he found family, and he thinks that Julia would have liked them both. She and Merle would have been cracking jokes together. Julia and Taako would have been throwing recipes at each other until they finally agreed on what to make for food.

Julia would have loved the little family that Magnus had found.

In a way, he thinks as he watches them, she met them at the same time he did.

 

~

 

The first thing that Taako thinks, when he sees the Grim Reaper, is how cute he is.

Merle has lost an arm and this fucker is responsible for it, but Taako sees his face and thinks about how handsome he is. Magnus is paralyzed, Lucas has run off, the world may be about to end from a crystalline threat, but at least the guy hunting their souls is something to look at.

Well, fuck.

Taako turns and sees Legion coming after him, a vision of death from above him, and he moves as quickly as he can.

Something is calling him –

 

Her brother is in danger and she is doing all she can to help him because if he dies, this is the last cycle –

 

The Umbra Staff makes it back to him and he snatches it up and dives back into the battle.

The oddly cute Grim Reaper can stuff it, they’ve got a world to save.

Besides, Taako thinks as he blasts one of the ghost-bots coming for him, no pretty boy is worth the world ending. If he lives through this, then they can talk.

Maybe he can flirt with Death.

 

~

 

The chalice speaks to something deep inside of him and Merle almost wants to pick it up and hurl it into the sun.

Every word it says, everything it shows him to try and compel him to pick it up and use it, only makes something inside of him glower angrily. There is something missing in his life, something that makes him dread waking up in the morning, but he still makes it. His life is his own, his world is not something to simply give up for the chance to make some things right.

He has, for all his faults, been a part of something bigger, has saved so many lives.

Taako and Magnus haven’t given up on him yet, so he figures that has to count for something. The chalice seems disappointed in his choice but it’s worth it when Taako and Magnus can talk to him again and they’ve both made the same choice.

It’s especially worth it to see Magnus growl out something about being used to this sort of thing.

The sheriff looks dumbstruck and it makes Merle want to cackle.

The thought comes, unbidden, that he is so proud of his boys, so proud of his little family. Static flashes in his head after he thinks that but he smiles anyway.

 

~

 

Her family is little and broken and long-since lost.

She is lost.

 

~

 

It takes so much effort to see them, to try and make them trust him.

The race was bad enough, but the lab was worse. Refuge is _worse._ Merle lost a big part of himself, led astray and betrayed. It hurts something inside of Barry, makes him wish he could comfort the dwarf that may as well be one of his fathers.

But Merle doesn’t remember him.

Lucretia made him into the enemy for them, made him into something to be feared and hated and he hates it. This is the legacy he has to bear – an enemy, an evil, nothing more than a blighted shadow that falls over their lives. Magnus, as good as his brother, has the easiest time trusting him but it is still nothing like what he remembers.

But the three of them still talk to him.

It gives Barry a bit of hope. His family still remembers him in some way, still remembers that he is good to talk to. Lup isn’t with them, isn’t anywhere that he can find, but Barry can carry the hope his family gives him.

If they are around and alive and safe – mostly – then maybe Lup is somewhere safe too.

He misses her.

Taako is one of his best friends, his lover’s brother, and Barry wishes he could just hold his family close. Keep them safe, give them their memories. Merle is alone and that is never good – Davenport was always a good counterbalance to him. Magnus found someone once, Barry knows that, but he also knows that she is long-since lost.

The elf is all alone and Barry hates it. The Taako he watches over is not the one he remembers. The kindness has been stripped out of him, the soft edges cut back into sharpness by the loss of his memories, the loss of his sister. Lucretia may have been doing what she thought was for the best but she broke too many people in the process.

The numbers game makes him feel guilty about that statement. How many people have they watched die?

Barry settles into his resolve to get them to trust him again. There is only one grand relic left, after all. He hopes that the love he has for his little family will be enough to get them through Wonderland.

 

~

 

They make it through Wonderland.

Only just, Lup realizes as she destroys a fucking lich that fucking attacked her brother. A few minutes later, Magnus’s body is gone and everything feels like it’s going to hell, but at least they’re all three alive. Taako is alive, though a little worse for wear.

Her exact mirror is gone.

Taako paid a price to Wonderland, gave up his beauty to see his family to safety, and Lup wants to start sobbing and never stop. Their lives have already taken so much from them – now the world has taken their identical faces from them. It doesn’t seem like it should be that big of a deal, but Lup and Taako have always been Lup and Taako. Lup-and-Taako, like one word, almost.

To change one face is to shatter a mirror that keeps them in check.

Lup forgets, sometimes, that she is supposed to be a living being. Without a body, without a physical self, she forgets.

She knows that Taako forgets who he is, without her. The choice to Forsake, one of the choices he made in Wonderland, is enough to prove that. A great deal many of the choices he has made since finding the Umbra Staff prove that.

She suspects he has made more choices that she would be wounded by.

Lup takes what passes for a deep breath and waits. Something is happening soon, she figures. Something big. She wishes that Barry were with her, wishes that Cyrus hadn’t betrayed her, wishes that her family was still all together.

Even from within a magical item, Lup knows that someone out there is guiding things along.

Even if she only has her hope and her love, it has to be enough.

 

~

 

Merle _remembers_.

Before now, before everything that happened in Wonderland and before everything just revealed to him in his memories, those were two words he didn’t like associated with each other. Remembering meant that he thought of his marriage. Thought of his children.

Thought of how he had abandoned both.

Mookie and Mavis, his little darlings, his kids. He abandoned them. Usually, remembering just means remembering that. Now remembering means a missing century of his lifetime – a family he had forgotten entirely. More than just his children, more than an abandoned wife, more than himself.

He looks up and sees a gnome – this isn’t new.

The gnome is Davenport and he has known that for a while now, but now there is a new meaning to it. Davenport, the captain of the Starblaster, his captain, the one he had been in love with and spent over a decade trying to force out the feeling of loss for. Merle lifts his chin and meets those green eyes, feels his heart beat faster when the gnome looks back at him and smiles, just for a moment.

The world is ending around them, the Hunger coming down on this plane after a decade of delay, but Merle has a feeling they’re going to make it through this.

After all, he may be down his clerical powers and an eye, but Davenport remembers and he remembers.

And love is just about enough to get someone through anything.

 

~

 

Taako has a sister.

Not only does he have a sister, but his sister is his twin and she is a goddamn mirror he has always used to see himself. His true self – the person he is when he isn’t bullshitting and pretending. Lup keeps him on the straight path, keeps him from becoming exactly the sort of person he is now.

And she is gone.

His sister is _gone_. She has been for a while and it is all at once an old wound and new pain. He should ask Kravitz, the next time he sees him. He can just imagine how that will go down. ‘Hey, babe, great to see you! Listen, did you ever collect the soul of my sister, who happens to be a lich?’

Taako almost wants to laugh but all it would come out as is bitter, burning feathers in his mouth, pain in his heart.

And then Angus shifts.

It’s not a big movement, just enough to remind Taako that the kid is there, but it sparks something in his mind. The night he was teaching the kid and Angus brought in macarons. The fireball that had destroyed them, had carved her name into the wall. The way the Umbra Staff had almost shot Kravitz.

They had been talking about a lich and –

And Barry was the only lich Taako had been in contact with at the time.

Of course Lup would protect him, Taako thought as he looked down at the Umbra Staff. This was hers, of course it would protect Barry. He frowned at it, though, because that still wasn’t the answer.

It came back to him, like it hated being apart from him. Like it wanted to stay at his side. Like it was alive, somehow. It had come to his defense at times and fire had always been the strongest spell style for it.

Lup had _always_ loved fire.

The way it danced at her fingertips, even before she truly knew herself. The way it had sparkled and crackled, the heat of it. The way it could be destruction and creation, sometimes both at the same time. Lup loved fire and she loved Barry and she was Taako’s sister.

The fireball it had released when they had retrieved the Gaia Sash. The fire that had carved _her_ name into the wall. The fireball that had nearly gotten Kravitz if he hadn’t stopped it. Every inch of the Umbra Staff belonged to Lup, he was just carrying it for a while. There was –

Taako stopped breathing for a second.

_It swallowed the magic of defeated magic users._

If Lup had been carrying it when she had gone off on her own, if she had been destroyed physically…Her lich form was a fallback. Lich forms were entirely made out of magic. If she had been defeated, somehow, her own weapon would have pulled her in.

Time seemed to stop as he brought the Umbra Staff down over his knee.

 

~

 

Merle is –

Well, it would probably be wrong to describe him as breathtaking. Merle is older now, he is cognizant of that after all this time, but he is Merle. Something in Davenport’s chest loosens, a decade-old ache of loss that he had never been able to name after Lucretia altering their memories. The only thing he had been able to say was his name but he had known that something was off. Even with mental faculties stripped away by a Voidfish, Davenport had been aware that there was something just out of his reach.

But Merle is almost glowing from how much happier he looks now than he did a moment ago.

Davenport’s heart beats faster at the sight of his old dwarf and then he looks around.

Magnus is there too, eyes wide and hair ruffled and Davenport almost wants to laugh. There’s one kid. Taako is there too and he looks distraught, like the world has already ended, and Davenport cannot see Lup. Barry is standing in the room as well, so there is another.

So he has three of the kids, the miserable ghost-in-a-shell of a fourth, and the fifth is missing. He meets Merle’s eyes and nods, ever so subtly. Merle seems, as he always has, to have been keeping a weather eye on their family. Maybe not the best of the two dads to be left in charge of them, but Davenport knows what he was like when their memories were gone.

He can understand.

When Merle looks back at him, his eyes are resolved, his fists clenched at his sides. He remembers, too, and now their family is back under their protections. Illusions and plants and healing. Always had seemed like the best combination, to him.

Merle raises his chin and Davenport wants to run to him, put his arms around him, but the Hunger is coming. This world is doomed if they do not do _something._ This entire planar system is doomed if they do not get out of it. Lucretia exposed the Light of Creation, after all. The Hunger follows it and they had sealed it away –

But it is too late to regret now.

Letting the love he feels for his little family fill his heart, Davenport takes a deep breath.

And then it begins.

**Author's Note:**

> So, hello TAZ fandom. I have joined you. 
> 
> Last night, I caught up on TAZ to the point of the end of the Tres Horny Boys adventure. I cried at the end and I felt inspired by Johann's song and now I am inflicting my fic upon you.


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